On Pronouns and Politics

They/them are furious; the White House isn't playing.

It used to be that the most controversial thing in an email signature was an obviously padded job title (“Global Thought Leader of Brand Synergy Optimization”) or the occasionally preachy inspirational quote (“Don’t wait for opportunity; create it!”). But welcome to 2025, where your digital business card isn't a throwaway email bookend—it's a political landmine with the explosive power of a mid-level Musk tweet.

At the heart of the hullabaloo are those previously mundane grammatical building blocks we learned about between snack breaks in second grade or from Schoolhouse Rock; the benign little words—he, she, we, mine, theirs, ours—we sub in for longer words to avoid repetition. Although inherently far from provocative, pronouns have taken up residence on the front lines of a cultural battle so bloody it makes the pineapple-on-pizza debate look like a discussion about the weather*.

*Not, like, whether those are clouds or chemtrails or which idyllic destination hamlet they’ll try to decimate next with a fire or flood, but you know what I mean.

Pronouns are hogging the spotlight this week after the White House began refusing to respond to any journalist who includes his or her (or their or xyr or eir or kittenself’s I am not making that up) preferred pronouns in their bios. According to press secretary Karoline Leavitt, any so-called reporter who does so “clearly does not care about biological reality or truth and therefore cannot be trusted to write an honest story.”

It’s a bold and controversial stance, to be sure. But what did the media expect from the administration working for a guy who signed an executive order banning diversity training and once called a porn star “horseface”? An Evite to his nonbinary birthday party?

A few years ago, there were just a handful of commonly accepted gender-neutral pronouns. But as of this writing, there appear to be hundreds (thousands? millions?) including bun/bunself, vamp/vampself, and leaf/leafself. These aren’t typos; these are linguistic nicknames that actual people expect other actual people to use seriously in conversation.

TRUMP: Leave it to the radical left. Total nonsense. It hasn’t happened, it never will happen. We’re not even considering it, frankly.

Critics call the refusal discrimination. Another example of Trump’s war on decency. A chilling message to gender nonconforming individuals *do my readers remember when that literally wasn’t even a thing?* that if your identity doesn’t fit neatly into one of two biological boxes, your questions don’t deserve answers.

Supporters say it's about professionalism. And proper grammar. And simple practicality. With the number of “neopronouns” being literally limitless, what exactly is the point? Pronouns exist expressly so that we don’t have to say “Jenna McCarthy wrote Jenna McCarthy’s column today about Jenna McCarthy’s opinions on pronouns by Jenna McCarthy’s self.” If we have to learn which brand new substitute set of terms corresponds with each brand new person we meet, doesn’t that defeat the purpose of pronouns altogether?

And apparently, it’s not just one brand new substitute set per acquaintance. According to The New York Times’s Ezra Marcus, “Many people who use neopronouns don’t just use one set. They select a handful, and show off their collections on websites like Pronouny.xyz, a site that provides usage examples for neopronouns.”

Pronouns: They’re like Hot Wheels or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles! Collect ‘em all!

Daily Wire’s White House correspondent Mary Margaret Olahan supported the official executive stance, calling pronouns in bios “wildly inappropriate” and likening them to sexual preference declarations. While I don’t quite agree that “Thanks, Jordan – they/them” is the same thing as “Thanks, Jordan – likes feet,” I’ll admit it’s a slippery slope. My issue is that neopronouns make a grand and sweeping assumption I don’t think folks who use them are ready to hear: Nobody really cares how you identify.

(Did I type that out loud?)

Think of all the millions of ways people identify themselves: There’s your job (software developer, barista, “influencer”); your political affiliation (libertarian, anarchist, contrarian); your heritage (Irish, Scandinavian, Texarkansan); your activism (pro-lifer, abolitionist, climate warrior); your lifestyle choices (vegan, marathoner, CrossFit addict); your religion (Jewish, Muslim, Scientologist); your generational status (boomer, millennial, gen x’er); your family role (dog mom, cool aunt, dragon daddy); and even your fandom (Belieber, Trekkie, Swifty).

Why in this crazy current society we live in does everything have to come down to what you do or don’t have (or *think* you have) in your pants, anyway?

Look. I’m a mom. (I’m also a wife and a sister and a friend and an author and a cat lady, but the mom part is most germane here.) I’ve bandaged many a tender, bruised heart and wish pain on no one [except, you know, murderous globalists and soulless pharma profiteers and violent criminals and anyone who would harm a child or an animal]. While I may be snarky and sarcastic on occasion a great deal of the time, I never-not-ever have or will set out to intentionally hurt another human or group of them. That statement wasn’t meant to be a dig; it’s a fact. Should anyone care, for example, that my favorite color is magenta or that the smell of canned tuna fish makes me gag, even if I declare that my very sense of self is wrapped up in those things? And even if you do deeply care—thanks, BTW—what sort of narcissist would I be if I thanked you for your concern by demanding you learn a whole new set of words to use when you refer to me as a pink-loving-tuna-hater?

I am fifty-five. But I don’t feel fifty-five; I feel thirty-seven. Some days, maybe even thirty-four. Not only do I not expect anyone to give a frog’s fanny about my mental age stamp, the thought of wanting—no, insisting—it to be recognized, celebrated, or given a novel lexiconography doesn’t merely border on absurd; it annexes the entire adjective.

This isn’t about denying anyone’s right to self-expression. Feel free to feel whatever age or gender or species or phylum of flower you’d like. This is about the reality that language is a shared social tool—and if one side is expected to constantly adapt while the other keeps inventing new rules, the result isn’t progress. It’s insanity.

Agree? Disagree? Need a nap [or quick nip of gin] after learning about leafself? Feel free to elaborate in the comments. ;)

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